"Humor Amargo" ("Bitter Humor") brings Hugo Carvana and Paulo José playing two strangers who perform in five different sketches the typical
and unusual humor from the people of Rio de Janeiro. It's a quite unusual type of humor that borders some darkness and some heavy irony but the
actors perform it in such a way that you can't help but laugh or nod in agreement because whatever they discuss from different situations is very
relevant for life.
The singing bit where the duo sings a humored song is fun and all, but the highlight of this short is when Paulo approaches Hugo while his
reading a newspaper and he's deeply interested in buying a house close to the beach, and both keep looking to the ads searching for such house but
Hugo keeps telling the other man to buy another house. When José goes to the place and returns, he complains that the house wasn't near the beach, it
was just a small fragment of the beach that could be seen from the distance. Hugo tries to console the other man by imagining that the exact place
that they are is located on the beach, and so close that the water can hit them. The playful trick works for a while.
It's more of an intellectual kind of humor, some very pertinent for the moment, others are a little too dated (or maybe that's just me, I don't
know, it simply didn't hit me all that much) but it turns out to be one of the best short films directed by Sérgio Santeiro. Thumbs up! 7/10.